Bleeding Cowboys
by Grounders
Summary: Four kids have been crushed in open farmland. The theory is it's a bunch of wild horses, but no one's ever seen or heard them come or go. Dean thinks there's something going on, and Sam wants to get the hell out of Nevada. Guess who wins? Reviews loved!
1. Chapter 1

First off, let me start with the ever-popular disclaimer: I do not own Supernatural, and I do not own Sam or Dean. They belong to Kripke, the CW, and all the other awesome people that make that show so immensely amazing. All other characters in this story do not exist, nor have they ever existed. Now, on with the show!

**NORTH FERNLEY, NEVADA**

**CHAPTER ONE**

Despite it being three in the afternoon, Lucy's Diner was overflowing with people, and mostly kids fresh out of a Monday's worth of school. It was loud and cramped, and despite the air conditioner being turned up to way beyond freezing, it was so hot Sam had had to shed his jacket. He fingered a heavy ceramic coffee mug, filled to the brim and steaming silently beside him as he clicked through page after page of potentially-freakish news, no longer really wanting the scalding beverage. So he avoided it, going over and over the three mildly suspicious stories he'd found: a guy getting shredded to bits by a wood chipper, a woman who's apartment managed to set itself on fire, and a man who was shredded to bits on his way home from work in San Francisco. After twenty minutes of looking, those were about the most 'supernatural' he could find, and they were all still kind of questionable. The wood chipper could be considered as kind of suspicious, the apartment could have been a case, but the one that seemed most likely at the moment was San Francisco; probably a werewolf or something.

Sam's shaggy head turned up as he heard footsteps making their way over to him, their clacking practically drowned out by the dozens of teeny-boppers snapping and shouting all around them. "Find anything?" Dean asked loudly, sliding a Caesar Salad in his general direction as he took the seat opposite his brother. When he was comfortably set up, he looked out into the overflowing crowds. "I've never seen so many hormones in one place. Except maybe at a Hannah Montana concert," he grumbled crankily. "So! What we got? Anything _fun _or _exciting_?"

Sam shook his head disapprovingly at his elder brother and ran his fingers over the keyboard, pressing this-that-and-the-other to get all the stories opened up again. "I don't know about fun or exciting," he said, as he browsed one last time through the three stories, getting himself back up to speed, "but there's a possible werewolf in San Francisco. That might be worth checking out, right?"

"A werewolf?" Dean asked speculatively, lathering a french-fry in ketchup. At the moment, he wasn't keen on werewolves: they'd gone through two in the past five weeks. "Great. The Revenge of Jacob Black."

"Who?" Sam asked half-heartedly, not really paying attention as he pulled up a picture of the corpse. It had only taken a couple of minutes to sort through the San Francisco police database, considering they hadn't updated it in a couple decades.

"Dude. Twilight. Common man," Dean said irately, throwing his napkin at Sam's head. "He's on my most wanted list."

"Why, what'd he do? Eat a stripper?" Sam asked, pulling up the man's police records: his name was Spencer Gunderson, twenty seven years old, born and raised in Utah, moved to San Francisco in 2004. According to the report, he didn't have any sort of criminal record, worked a median job in a bank, and didn't have any real enemies. He didn't have any family either.

Dean gave him an exasperated look. "No, genius," he said, annoyance creeping into his heavy voice. "It's what he _didn't_ do. The guy's a freakin' pansy with an eight-pack. And a paedophile by the way."

Sam looked up at Dean over the top of his laptop and furrowed his brow at him. "What?" he asked in disbelief. He'd never in all his life herd of a paedophilic werewolf.

"Twilight Sammy, get with the times," Dean replied, shoving as much burger as he could into his mouth. He let out a groan of pleasure as the grease and cheese dripped out of the corners of his mouth. "Oh my _god_, heaven's in Nevada!"

Sam rolled his eyes and turned back to his computer. "So, the guy's in his late twenties, some sort of accountant working for Bank of America. The autopsy file says he was dismembered and his flesh shredded, like he had been attacked by a pack of wild dogs," he summarized, scrolling down the page as he went, scanning the file for anything else that could be mildly important.

"Or one very pissed off mog," Dean commented, revelling in another gigantic bite.

"A what?" Sam asked blankly, shutting the top of his computer and pushing it aside to make way for 'lunch'.

Dean gagged as a chunk of burger that slid down the wrong tube, partially to express his disbelief and mostly to keep from being killed by a dead cow. "Mog! Man-Dog! Spaceballs! Come on Sam, work with me!"

"Sure, if you say so," Sam said airily, with that tone of his that meant 'I'm humouring you so we can carry on with our lives.'

Dean grumbled something under his breath and took a deep drink of coke, draining the can quite happily. He was about to wave the waitress over for a second when he stopped. His brow furrowed and his dark eyes flashed over to the pre-teens sitting scattered around the table behind Sam. There were six of them, three on each plushy cushion, all talking in semi-hushed voices. Or, as hushed as was possible in this messed-up place.

"What?" Sam asked, watching him with concern and speculation from across the table.

Dean waved him into general silence and leaned forward a bit, folding his hands on the table, trying hard to listen in on the kids' conversation while not looking overly conspicuous – he was fairly good at it, especially these days. He'd had lots of practice throughout his one-track life.

"Shut up Ed!" a boy said. He seemed to be the eldest, but probably only by a year or two; his hair was dark and shaved close to his head, and he had a very commanding air about him. "You want the whole damn place to hear?"

"Why the hell shouldn't they?" Ed snapped back, leaning over the table towards the older guy. "The guy's _dead_, Jimmy! _Dead_! He's not supposed to be dead!"

"It wasn't our fault, all right," Jimmy answered, pressing his back into the cushioned diner chair to get away from Ed's scalding eyes. "We didn't do anything wrong. All we did was chase him."

"Yeah, into _oncoming traffic_," Ed replied, a manic tone seeping into his frigid already quivering voice. Everyone else at the table was quiet, their eyes turned away to examine their forks, the tabletop, the monotonous road out the window, or their uneaten food. Really, anywhere but at Jimmy and Ed, who seemed about ready to crack.

"Shut _up_, Ed!" Jimmy snarled again, smashing his balled up fist against the table. "It was a freak accident! The horses never come this close to town," he said, his own voice starting to betray his uneasiness.

Ed stared at him with utter disbelief. "We chased him into a _stampede_," he said, trying to get the fact beaten into Jimmy's thick skull.

"He went of his own accord!" the other replied, still trying to defend themselves against the thought of maybe doing something wrong…especially so wrong as killing someone.

"Are you not paying _any_ attention? The guy's _dead_ for goodness sakes! And it's not like it's the first time _ever _that they've come through there, right? The Baker kid last week, and Lucy Samuels before that, and what's-his-face Adamson last month! That's a heck of a lot of kids Ed. A heck of a lot! All in the same place, by the same stupid-arse horses! _How _was this a freak accident?" Ed's green eyes were getting bigger and more terrified with every word he uttered, until they looked like they were going to pop out of his skull. He was shifting desperately in his seat, his head turning every-which-way as though he were looking for something. "We're gonna get tossed in juvi man. Our lives our ruined, we're gonna die old and alone in some prison somewhere."

"Ed! Zip it!" Jimmy snapped for the third time, his fists quaking on the table-top. "Those fucking things came out of nowhere, we had no _idea_ they were coming, and I'm betting neither did he. So can we get the hell out of here and maybe talk about this somewhere _else_?" he asked exasperatedly, pushing himself up off the seat.

Dean watched as one by one the kids filled after him, sliding out of the booths and then ducking quickly out of the door, their hands shoved in their pockets as their eyes flashed around them nervously. Ed followed last, looking as though he'd just seen a ghost: he was pale as a sheet and his skin had started to shine with the unwelcome tinge of a cold sweat.

"You hear that?" Dean muttered to Sam as he toyed with what was left of the burger. "Maybe we won't have to leave Nevada after all!"

"It was a stampede. Of horses. Last time I checked Dean, horses weren't supernatural," Sam said, pushing a few leaves of lettuce into his mouth. "I mean, if it was a herd of elephants then yes, but it wasn't. It was horses. In Nevada. We're going to San Francisco."

"You heard the kid! They came outta nowhere! Something huge like that, you figure you'd hear it from here to China, right? And four _kids_, in the past _month_? And a horse stampede? When was the last time you herd of any kind of stampede? Cowboy movies don't count. And the Lion King: that doesn't count either. Like, real _life_ stampede. Never Sam. Never. Dude, there's a job here, and I'm not leaving until we've fixed everything," he said determinedly, throwing the last of the burger into his mouth. "Best cheeseburger _ever_."

Sam raised an eyebrow at him. "Nevada's pretty much the wild horse capital of America, so a herd of stampeding horses really isn't that weird," he commented.

Dean's brow furrowed. "There's a wild horse capital in America?" he asked speculatively. "Wow. I really don't care."

"Dean, it's on their state quarter," Sam said with, impatience and exasperation slipping back into his voice.

"I _still _don't care. Hurry up, I wanna go check this out," Dean said impatiently.

"_This_? What happened to San Francisco?" Sam asked in disbelief, pushing his empty bowl away.

"Yup. This. Common, Sammy! Time's a wastin'," he replied, sliding out of the booth and pushing his way through the teeny-boppers towards the big glass doors.

Sam almost knocked himself out with the table. The last thing he wanted to do right now was chase a bunch of wild horses. People were killed in stampedes…well, he wasn't sure how often it happened, but he knew it did. In San Francisco, they had a werewolf waiting for them.

He sighed with irritation and pushed himself out, tossing his jacket over his shoulder and tucking his computer under his arm. Maybe if he could prove to Dean that this was just some crazy, random happenstance, they could move on and actually _help_ someone.


	2. Chapter 2

**CHAPTER TWO**

The motel room they were staying in was dark and clammy, the complete opposite of the diner. Sam sat at the small table under the window, his computer plugged into the dial-up so he'd be able to browse through the police records. So far, he had three out of the four kids' files pulled up, and the last one would be coming soon.

He clicked on the final name and the most recent death in the county: a Joseph Emerson, about thirteen years old, lived with his parents and two elder siblings on an old farm not all that far from here. Cause of death: trampled by wild horses.

The second name was Andrew Adamson. He was in the same class as Joseph, at the same school, and lived in a small apartment building with his mother. According to the write up, his parents had divorced three years ago, and his father had been M.I.A since. Cause of death: trampled by wild horses.

The last two profiles belonged to Lucille Samuels and Evan Baker, two cousins who had moved to Nevada five years ago, together with their families. Lucille (or Lucy, as he found she was called) was the eldest of four girls, and Evan the middle of three. Both of them had gone out, on completely different nights, and both had been found crushed and broken the next morning. And the cause of death: trampled by wild horses.

Sam looked at the pictures on the files, of four young kids both in life and death. He always got uneasy when kids died; it seemed so unnatural. They were always so full of life, bouncing off the walls and ceilings. Looking at the pictures, they looked like really big, really messed up dolls. It was kind of creepy now that he thought about it.

He shook the thought out of his head and cleared his throat in an attempt to get Dean's attention, but his brother's eyes stayed firmly planted on the television screen.

"Dean!" he tried, and this time Dean gave him an acknowledging grunt. "Could you turn that off? Or at least down? We've got work to do."

Dean turned the volume down two bars as something exploded off screen and rolled around on the bed so he was facing Sam (getting up and moving would be _far_ too difficult, after all). "So I'm right then! This is a job. I told you so," he said smugly. "We have any popcorn?"

"What? No. No popcorn. And this really isn't the right time. Can you _please_ turn that thing down?" Sam asked desperately. He hated it when he had to compete with the television for Dean's attention, and at the moment, he was loosing to Arnold Schwarzenegger.

"I did turn it down," Dean protested lightly.

"Dean. Please," Sam said, his no-nonsense tone thick and aggravated. This whole thing had been Dean's idea, the least he could do was pay attention to the research. Sam had wanted to go to San Francisco, but _no_. They had to do Dean's horse-thing.

"All right, all right, Mister Cranky Pants," Dean replied, shutting the television off.

"Thank you. Now, I looked up the kids, and they all go to the same middle school: Elmer Oaks," Sam began, turning back to his computer with the files laid out neatly in a row.

Dean gave a half-assed laugh. "Elmer," he replied breathily.

Sam ignored him. "They were all in the same class, all eighth grade. Ninth soon, but school still doesn't end for another two months. Anyway, they don't seem to be related, except for the first two, Lucy Samuels and Evan Baker, who were cousins. There's no mention that any of them ever really knew each other, except for Lucy and Evan. The stampedes all happened in the middle of the night, in the same general area: the Silver Horse Ranch, which doubles as a bed-and-breakfast. There've been no witnesses to any of the kid's deaths until –"

"Until now," Dean cut in, his thoughts flashing back to the kids in the dinner.

"Yeah. Until now. All the deaths have happened during the past six weeks, and up until then there hasn't been a single wild horse roaming anywhere near civilization. No one's ever seen the herd either, so they can't ID the horses, and no one at the Silver Horse has ever heard anything," he added, saving the file to his hard drive.

"And that's…weird, right?" Dean asked. What the hell did he know about horses? He'd never ridden one, except for that nasty little pony at the carnival when he was five, and he'd never had a chance to do more than watch them on tv. What worried him was why _Sam_ knew so much.

"Yes, Dean. That's weird. Usually when a herd of horses comes stampeding through somewhere, you hear them. Not to mention they're less than likely o vanish into thin air when they're done," Sam replied.

Dean clapped his hands together definitively, as though he needed no further evidence. "Great! It's a case!"

Sam looked back at the kid's files, scouring them for anything he may have missed, as he always did. "Yup," he said distractedly. "It's a case."


	3. Chapter 3

**CHAPTER 3**

Dean shrugged his battered leather coat off as he pushed open the big glass doors into the library. It smelled musty – like no one in there had ever gone out into the sun. It was stale, and reeked of old people and peppermint. He hated libraries.

He stood in the centre of the entrance, a few feet away from the counter where a middle-aged woman was stamping books. He could see practically everything from this point…until the shelves started to block out the back of the building. He searched what he could silently, brushing his eyes over the many tables and chairs – most of which were empty. And why wouldn't they be? It was a bright, sunshiney day. You'd have to be half mad to spend your time indoors. Or a librarian. Either half mad or a librarian, though to Dean there really wasn't that much of a difference.

He caught a swift movement out of the corner of his eye and shifted around. There – in the history section. That was history, right? It had been ages since the last time he'd been in a library; in truth, he couldn't remember when that last time _was_.

He walked quickly but quietly through the shelves of the history section, looking for a bobbing blonde head. When he found it, the owner was curled up in the corner between the wall and a shelf, a giant book labelled _Nevada_ in his lap. He was flipping anxiously through the pages, looking for something it seemed.

Dean watched him quietly for a few minutes, watching the kid in his self-induced frenzy. It was kind of entertaining. But there were questions that needed some sorting out. "Hey, Ed," Dean tested.

The blonde head snapped up and the book cracked shut, reverberating through the empty library lick a clap of thunder through the grand canyon. Ed jumped when he saw Dean hovering above him, and opened his mouth to speak: he couldn't get anything out but a weak, half-broken 'ye…..'

"Hi. Gavin Malone, FBI," he said, flashing the kid his badge. "Rumour has it you and a couple of your buddies saw what happened to the Emerson boy. Is that correct?"

Dean saw Ed tense, his back getting a bit straighter, his hands shaking in his lap as he shook his head. "I swear I didn't see anything," he stuttered, barely able to force the sentence out.

"Yeah?" Dean asked. The good thing about kids was that they were so easy to manipulate. Everything else he could take or leave. Especially the spoiled brats; those he just wanted to throw out a moving minivan. "Well, we got a kid named Jimmy who says different," he bluffed. He hadn't spoken to Jimmy yet, and probably wouldn't, considering Ed was clearly the weak link. He'd crack faster than you could say 'bubba gump'.

Ed's bottom lip quivered a bit, and then it all came gushing out. "I'm sorry! We didn't mean it! Were just playing! I mean, it was just a joke, you know? We just wanted to scare him, it was funny! It was _supposed _to be funny but now he's dead and please don't send me to juvi!" he howled.

"Keep it down, kid. This is a library," Dean said, stooping down so he was eye to eye with Ed. "Now I promise you're not going anywhere, all right? I know it was an accident. I just need you to tell me exactly how it happened, down to the last detail, and don't worry how crazy it sounds, cuz the crazy parts are the bits that help the most."

Ed chewed nervously on his bottom lip, looking as though he couldn't decide whether to trust him or not. The last thing Ed wanted to do was wind up in juvenile hall, but how did he know this random stranger was telling the truth? He _was_ a fed, he guessed, so maybe that counted for something… "How do I know you'll keep your promise?" he asked shakily.

Dean let out a small groan of frustration and rolled his eyes. "Kid, we can do this here, or we can do it down town, with tape recorders, records, and iron bars. Which would you prefer?"

Ed gulped down the knot that had jammed itself in his throat. It wasn't budging, so he'd have to try and talk around it. "Okay, okay. Um…we were playing. We wanted to scare him, you know? I mean, Joey was the kind of kid that you couldn't _not_ pick on, even if you wanted to. He was like…he was an ass, no social skills at all. He thought he was better than all of us combined, which is total bull."

Dean cut him off with a strained chuckled. "Yeah, I know the type," he said with a wonky grin.

Ed let his rigid posture sag, lowering the most paranoid of his defences. "Right? Well, we were just kinda messing around right? There was play practice after school, those stupid plays that they get the whole school involved in, you know? So we were all staying late. We were the last to leave, me, Jimmy, Alana, and Zoe. And Joey. We were doing sets, and we were kinda goofing around with the paints and things. Joey got all ticked off, right, and then he started yelling at us. Jimmy didn't like that _at all_, because like I said, Joe's kind of a twit.

"So we all left about ten in the evening on Friday, and Joe was all fuming with ass-ish-ness. So he got on his bike and he started to go home. We were gonna go home too, but then Jimmy thought it'd be fun to give him a scare, right? So we followed him, but we stayed pretty far back, so he wouldn't see us and all. And he lives kinda far away from everyone too, cuz his parents' farm is like…_waaaay_ out there. It's like an hour to and from school every freakin' day. So there's a shortcut through the Silver Horse field, and Mrs. R has always been pretty nice about it, so he cuts through there and it takes off like seven minutes or something, but the place is totally creepy at night, and – "

"Wait," Dean stopped him, trying to piece the bits of Ed's together, "who's Mrs. R?"

"Mrs. Regina," Ed said in that annoying teenage 'duh' voice. "She owns the place, runs the ranch and stuff. She's a real nice lady. Her daughter goes to school with us. Her name's Barbara, but everyone calls her Barbie cuz she's tall and blonde and…you know, big," he said, cupping his hands over his chest, "for a twelve-year-old."

"Ah huh," Dean said, eyebrows raised. He'd have to remember to look her up later. "You know her last name?"

"Dempsie," Ed replied, shoving the heavy book off his lap. "Should I continue?" he asked cautiously, not wanting to provoke the FBI guy standing in front of him. What if he talked to much, and the guy threw him in the slammer? Could they do that? Throw you in jail for talking to much? He didn't want to risk it.

"Yeah, sure," Dean replied unenthusiastically as he finally managed to sort all the 'likes' and 'rights' out of Ed's story.

"Okay. Well, he was biking through right, and Jimmy's all 'we should totally freak him out now!' and we're all 'totally dude!' so we all get off our bikes and run into the bushes, cuz the Silver Horse field's always really muddy, no matter what time of year and whatever, with lots of potholes and things, so you can't ride your bike thorugh it without getting stuck or thrown off, kay?" he asked, making sure Agent Malone was still following him.

"…kay," Dean said hesitantly, not too happy about the loll in Ed's story. The sooner he got out of here the better.

"Okay. So he gets off the bike and we start running through the bushes, and then Jimmy starts doing his coyote howl (he's really good at it) and Joey's like…_freaking_ out cuz you know, it's the middle of the night and that field's like pitch black cuz no one puts lights up and then the whole Annie Wilde thing."

Dean's brows furrowed in a mixture of confusion and frustration. "Yeah okay, Annie Wilde, keep going," he encouraged kind of roughly.

"Yeah. Well, so he's freaking out and he ditches his bike and starts running, and we're running after him right, and Zoe does her insane-lady cackle and he's panicking even more than before because I mean, common, Annie Wilde. Then he trips right, and we he looks back and we _dive_ into the bushes because if he sees us, he's telling everyone, and we all get in huge trouble. He's a real snitch. Or…was." Ed got quiet for a few seconds, but it didn't last long.

"So he gets back up and starts running again, but he's like, limping or something because he…well he tripped."

"Yes, yes! He tripped! What happened?" Dean asked eagerly. This was taking _way _too long.

"I dunno, I guess his foot got caught in a pothole or something," Ed said with a shrug, wondering why it was so important to know how the kid had tripped.

"Not with the tripping! Hurry up, keep going," Dean urged impatiently.

"Um…okay, so, he starts limping away real fast and then this weird-ass fog starts coming in, which is kinda strange, but okay. He keeps up going, but he's like…slowing down at this point cuz he's getting freaked out, we can tell. I was kinda freaked out too because Annie. Anyway, he like stops right, in the middle of the field, and we have no idea why, and now I'm freaking out. Like _freaking_ out.

"And then there's this horse, one of those wild mustangs you know, which is really weird because they _never_ come in this close. So first I thought maybe it was one of Mrs. R's, cuz she's got like, twenty of them for the tourists and stuff, but they're all in at night usually. Then the horse starts running, and then there's more of them, and more of them and they're all pounding across the field right at…right at…at Joe. They didn't even slow down."

"So they…trampled all over him?" Dean asked when it was clear Ed wasn't gonna come out and say it.

He nodded his head vigorously. "It was really loud too. There must have been a good two hundred off them…and then at the end there was this guy, dressed like a _cowboy _riding an appaloosa and yelling at them all to 'giddy up', like in the movies."

"Rewind. He was riding a _what_?" Dean asked.

"An appaloosa, about fifteen hands maybe, if that helps," Ed replied.

"It had _fifteen hands_?" Dean asked. In all his years of hunting he'd never heard of anything with fifteen hands. Unless…wasn't there that thingy from Greek mythology? Sam could look it up later.

"What?" Ed asked with disbelief. "No! It's a horse. A spotty horse. An appaloosa."

"...so where do the fifteen hands come in?" Dean asked incredulously. He didn't know much about horses, but he knew they didn't have _one _hand, let alone fifteen.

"No dude. No. He was fifteen hands _high_," Ed clarified, trying to beat some sense into Agent Malone.

"I still don't understand what hands have anything to do with this horse," he muttered, raising an eyebrow in question.

Ed groaned with frustration. "Ah!" he exclaimed, "Forget it! The hands aren't important!"

"But…okay whatever. Keep going. You saw a cowboy."

'Right. Cowboy. Yeah he was whooping and chasing after the herd, then they all sorta…vanished. Into thin air. And we ran like hell. And that's it."

"That's it?" Dean repeated.

"That's it," Ed confirmed. He toyed with the pages of the heavy book laying beside him, and then managed to work up the courage to ask: "Can I go home now?"

"Yeah, get outta here," Dean urged, watching Ed shoot up so quickly he would have put the Flash to shame. He watched as the younger boy sped around the corner of the bookshelf and herd the librarian curse loudly at him as he blew by her desk, then the slamming of the glass doors announced that he was well and truly gon.

Dean looked over to where Ed had been sitting. He'd left the book on the floor, and though Dean knew nothing about the Dewy Decimal System, he picked it up and stuck it back on a random shelf. As he walked away, he paused, remembering how quickly Ed had snapped the heavy volume shut.

"What are you hiding, Eddie-boy?" he asked himself quietly, pulling the book off the shelf. He opened it, checked the spine and both covers – no stamps or barcodes. It wasn't a library book. Dean looked around to see that no one was watching, then tucked the book into his jacket. It was hardly inconspicuous, but it made him feel better as he walked back out the frond door.


	4. Chapter 4

**CHAPTER FOUR**

"Wake up, bitch," Dean demanded, giving Sam a light kick on the shin as he thudded the Nevada book down on the small table. "We got work to do."

Sam blinked his eyes hard, as though that could drive the sleep away. He didn't remember passing out at all, just sitting at the keyboard, doing some research, and then taking a small break…which would explain why he had fallen asleep. He stared at the book in front of him through blurry eyes, trying to focus on the illusive title. Nevada? Why was Dean giving him a history book? He reached out and pulled it towards him, cracking the stiff spine open as he heard the dull click of the refrigerator door opening. He rubbed his eye quickly and batted his eyelids, then looked down at the page he had opened. The Civil War in Nevada. What that had to do with stampeding horses, he couldn't say. "What is this?" he asked, his voice still laced through with sleep.

Dean looked over at him from the mini fridge as he popped the top off a pair of Heinekens. "Morning princess!" he said enthusiastically, slipping into the seat across from Sam. "How's thing's up in your ivory tower, Sleeping Beauty?"

Sam ignored him and continued turning the book's light, glossy pages. It looked like a relatively new volume, which he could honestly say they didn't come across too often in their line of work. "Did you find them?" he asked instead, running his finger over a section labelled 'Mines and Miners.' "What's with the textbook?" he added, flipping the cover shut.

"I found Ed in the library, hovering over that…thing," he said, waving vaguely at the book. "He said it was a stampede of horses in the Silver Horse ranch field thingy."

"Yeah, but we knew that," Sam said, looking out at Dean disapprovingly.

"Yeah I'm getting to it wise guy," Dean snapped sarcastically. "Now shut up and listen. Apparently a fog rolled in and brought the ponies with it. They didn't hear them coming or going. One second they were there, the next they were gone. And they were being chased by a whooping cowboy apparently, which sounds like a bad porn."

Sam looked back down at the book. "Sounds like typical ghost stuff," he muttered. "So why the book?"

"I dunno. Whatever it is, the kid didn't want anyone seeing it. So! Your job to figure out what's going on with it."

Sam popped the cover open again. "Okay, I'll look through it later. Anything else or that's it?"

"Oh yeah. He kept saying something about some Annie Wilde chick. No idea who that is. And we should probably go talk to Mrs. R at some point," he noted, remembering how Ed had seemed to justify everything with a breezy 'you know Annie'.

"Who's Mrs. R?" Sam asked blandly as Dean finally offered him the second beer. He took it more than willingly and quaffed it uncharacteristically. He was thirsty. With his free hand he threw open the heavy hard-cover book and turned it around. He felt at the inside of the back cover, looking for anything that might bulge out to reveal…what? A note maybe. A map? A birth certificate? Anything would be nice. Just some sort of random clue. Something was better than nothing, after all.

"Mrs. Regina Dempsie. She's got a kid that goes to school with these guys apparently," Dean remarked, shrugging his heavy leather jacket off of his shoulders and dumping it on the stool by the window. "She runs a B'n'B or something, which owns the field all these kids were nailed at."

"Dude, seriously? The closet's _right _there," Sam said with bitter annoyance as he gave up on the inside covers. Dean gave him an exasperated look and an angry growl, but picked up the jacket and threw it into the closet. Sam was about to suggest a hanger, but quickly gave up on a lost cause. "Okay, so who's Annie Wilde?" he asked instead, averting his dark eyes from Dean's. If he looked, he knew he wouldn't be able to resist poking at him to hang the jacket up.

Dean opened his mouth, then shut it and sucked in a breath through his teeth. "I dunno. I didn't ask," he said, a hint of disguised regret in his voice.

Sam stared at him with irritation and disbelief. "Why?" he asked simply.

"The kid was getting on my nerves! You know how much these teeny boppers talk Sam? Do you? Most of it doesn't even make sense! It's like there aliens or something with their creepy little squeaky cracky voices and their acne and – you just wanna – ugh!" he said, making a stabbing motion with his hand. "He had a picture of the freaking Jonas Brothers in his binder man. The Jonas Brothers! So not only is he a scary tween, but he's a gay scary tween with bad taste in men! I mean Brad Pitt, yes. Leonardo DiCaprio's kind of a douche, but a sexy douche. The Jonas Brothers?"

"Yeah, okay Dean," Sam said, cutting his rant short. He stuffed his computer into his bag and tucked the heavy Nevada book into the crook of his elbow. Quickly, he swung his bag over his shoulder and started towards the door.

"Woah, where are you going? We got work to do. You got research and…nerd stuff," Dean said.

"Yeah, well, I can't do my nerd stuff with Grey's Anatomy blaring out of the tv, so I'm going to the library and I'm gonna do some real research, okay?" Sam said irritably, pulling the door open and heading out. "Meet me at the diner in an hour."

"It's Doctor Sexy, Doctor Cranky!" Dean called back lamely as Sam shut the door behind him.


	5. Chapter 5

**CHAPTER FIVE**

Two hours later, Dean sat alone at the same booth by the same window. Sam was late, which either meant he had found something or…no, he had found something. Nothing else would hold him up. Except maybe _not_ finding something, in which case he'd still be busy trying to find something. One thing was for sure though: there was no way in hell he was going to a library _twice_ in one day. That would be two times more than he had in the last ten years.

Diana came back and set a couple plates down on the table in front of him: a chilli dog, a plate of fries, some onion rings and his usual bacon cheeseburger. She gave him a pleasant smile as he rubbed his hands together with satisfaction. "You are an _angel_," he said, drowning the fries in a bottle of ketchup. "And I am in bacon-cheeseburger-chilli-dog-fries-and-onion-ring heaven! God bless America."

Just as he reached out across the table for his burger, a book came crashing down, sending his soda flying. He snatched the sandwich away with animal-like reflexes before the coke could dowse it and taint it's juicy perfectness. "Dude!" he scolded, giving Sam a hard glare as he fell into the seat across from him.

"Yeah okay, shh. I found it. Big time. Annie was a little – whoa, is that all yours?" he asked distractedly, taking in the hearty meal for two.

"I'm hungry," Dean said, with a defensive shrug as he settled the sandwich perfectly in his broad hands. "Come to daddy," he said lustfully, pushing the burger between his teeth.

"Sure...anyway, I couldn't find anything on Annie Wilde on the Internet, right? I searched for hours – or hour or something, and I found literally nothing. So I started looking through the books in the library and still: nothing. So then I remembered the book, because why would Ed…long story short, there's a section on Nevada hauntings," he said eagerly, pulling the book open at a bright pink post-it note than Dean hadn't noticed before.

He laughed. "It's pink," he justified when he noticed Sam's exasperated glare.

Sam turned the book around so he was looking at it upside down, and Dean could see it properly. He tapped his finger on a sepia picture from the 1800s. In the picture was a tall man in a ten-gallon hat, a big bushy moustache drooping over his top list. There was a bandana laced around his neck, a holster with two guns in it, and leather chaps over his pants. Beside him, sitting on an upturned wooden barrel, was a young girl who looked the exact opposite of her stoic companion. Her feet didn't quite touch the ground, though they were getting close. Her blond hair tumbled over her shoulders in perfectly tight ringlets, and a silky black bow kept it out of her face. She was wearing a satin dress adorned with Spanish lace, and in her dainty hands she held a straw bonnet.

Dean looked it over as he chewed. "Huh," he commented. "Cowboys." He tapped the picture of the little girl. "She's short."

"Yeah, thanks. This photo was taken in the late 1860s, of Josiah and Annie Wilde. Annie's mum died in childbirth, so it was always just the two of them on their ranch. He raised cattle, and she was his little princess. This kid never did _anything_ for her self, seriously. She had a maid that dressed her and tied her shoelaces for her. Someone followed her around with a parasol all day so she wouldn't get burned."

Dean stifled a laugh. "A parasol, Sam?" he asked teasingly.

"Yes. A parasol. It was a parasol, they didn't have umbrellas back then," Sam said, his voice thick with exasperated impatience. "Anyway, her dad was a cattle herder, and not famously wealthy, so he didn't have money for a tutor. So she went to the schoolhouse like normal kids and got teased for wearing fancy clothes and not knowing how to herd sheep or something. Basically she was an outsider, kind of a looser I guess. She didn't have any friends, was the butt of everyone's jokes, and was perfectly happy playing in the corner by herself. Or that's what it says there anyway," he said, taking the book back and spinning it the right way around. He examined the text for a while and let out a soft 'ah' when he found it.

"Okay, she was a looser, what next?" Dean asked impatiently.

"Okay. Um. Yeah, it turns out she wasn't so happy, so on her thirteenth birthday she went out to see her dad, who apparently had to work, or drive some cattle or something. And so she was alone on her birthday. Again. And she wasn't happy, because according to the book, as much as her dad loved her, he was never home because he had to work to pay for all her pretty dresses and expensive shoes – "

"And parasol wielding nannies?" Dean added with a low chuckle, sinking his teeth into the cilli dog.

"Yes, and parasol wielding nannies. Anyway, what her father _didn't_ know was apparently she hated the satin dresses and parasols, and all she wanted was for him to spend some time with her. So she decided to tell him what she wanted, and she chased him out into the field. Apparently, at this point, her father was done with the cows or just didn't do it, I dunno, it doesn't matter. The books kind of vague anyway. Point was, he had gone to round up some mustangs for market, because that was where the money was. So he and a couple of pals were herding a large group into a pen, and guess who should step in the way?" Sam asked eagerly.

"Annie?" Dean asked.

"Annie. She was trampled under the hooves of a herd of wild horses, her father whooping after them and spurring them on as they crashed over her. He didn't even notice her there until all the horses had passed, and then she was just a cracked and crunched up carcass," he said, closing the top of the book.

"Wait, what's 'whooping?'" Dean asked distastefully. And more importantly, why did Sam use it in a sentence?

"You know, whooping, like 'yeehaw'," Sam replied, miming the whirling of a lasso over his head.

"Riiiiiiiight," Dean confirmed, arching his eyebrow at his little brother.

"So, the apparently, Annie was killed on the day of her thirteenth birthday. All the kids who've been trampled have been from the same class, so I'm guessing that makes them all roughly about that age, maybe even _just _that age. AND, the field now belonging to the Dempsies used to be the Bay Canyon Ranch, home to Annie and her father." He pulled a ball pen out of his pocket and sketched a rough, lopsided square onto a napkin. In the lower right-hand corner he drew another, much smaller square, and near the opposite end, a large circle. He tapped at the square. "I did some digging at City Hall, and it turns out the land was laid out like this: the house was in the corner here, and up at the top was the paddock, where she was crushed," he said, pointing at the circle. "That's also got the path on it that the kids take home every night."

Dean nodded and took Sam's map. He looked at it for a moment, then wiped it across his ketchup-spotted mouth. "I'm not even gonna ask what a paddock is," he remarked, crumpling the napkin and shoving it under his plate. "Other than your sissy vocabulary, good job! Only took you two hours huh? Ah, Sammy, what would I do without you," Dean said with a light sarcastic tone to his voice.

Before Sam could say anything, Dean slid out of the booth, and headed towards the door. Sam gathered his things quickly and trotted up beside him, stuffing the book into his bag. "Aren't you gonna pay?" he asked disapprovingly.

"All ready did, when I thought I was gonna leave without you," he said, pushing the glass door open with his shoulder. "So now we check out," he said, making his way to the shining black impala parked by the side of the road.

"And into the Silver Horse," Sam added, sliding into the passenger seat.


End file.
